For some time now, large international
political organizations have partly leveraged new information
and communication technologies. They have maintained websites
to publicize their goals and initiatives; widely used email to
rapidly and cheaply share information and broadcast Newsletters
for their members; used the Internet to find information, news,
data and partners.

More recently, the same organization have created, with great
expectations, web and/or email-based discussion spaces, through
simple online forums or mailing lists. Such spaces, though useful
to promote discussion in specific phases and contexts, have revealed
great limitations and difficulties

Only
users with access and ability to use email or internet can
participate;

Users
can interface only with same-language users;

Difficulties
in sorting and reading through large amounts of messages;

Inability
to build consensus and agreement except for simple issues;

Inevitable
struggles around unclear moderation powers;

Important
authentication, security and privacy problems;

Often
chaotic and pointless discussions;

Often
dominated by non-representative demographic groups;

These technologies
have enabled people to establish contact and find similarly minded
people in remote places, but have done almost nothing to fill
the great democratic and efficiency gap created by their great
geographic distances and different languages.